Moscow Digital Twin: how 3D modeling and AI transform municipal management

Since 2019, Moscow has had the Moscow Digital Twin, a remarkable platform that helps manage residential, industrial and social development undertakings, make managerial decisions and oversee prominent city projects. Read more on mos.ru to learn about how it works and why it is a pivotal Moscow management tool today.

How Moscow Digital Twin works

The Moscow Digital Twin is an exact VR 3D copy (a photogrammetry model) of the capital with all engineering systems and transport lines. It took more than 12 million photographs of the entire city area taken from different angles both from the air and earth in order to create it, the images being totally updated every year to keep the photogrammetry model up-to-date.

The photogrammetry model is enhanced with five thousand analytical layers with data arrays related to all areas of the city’s life, they are updated in real time. The platform also stores an archive of 13 thous. km panoramic images of Moscow area since 2013, so users can view up-to-date or historic images and take high-precision measurements.

The Moscow Digital Twin was developed by Moscow’s developers, based on freely redistributable software (FRS).

How to use Moscow Digital Twin

It is the Moscow Digital Twin that is a key tool for making urban planning decisions and adopting development strategies. One of its principal functions is the ability to embed 3D copies of designed buildings, structures and any other three-dimensional objects into the photogrammetry model, thus making it possible to assess how construction will fit into the architectural landscape or what burden it will create on infrastructure and to also plan transport accessibility at the stage of making a decision about the construction. The Moscow Digital Twin helps to make balanced urban planning decisions and choose the best development locations both in the current context and in view of the city growth in the future.

Many projects that are well-known by each Muscovite were previously simulated with the Moscow Digital Twin, this covering three thousand buildings, including the new Lomonosov cluster.

Furthermore, the platform is widely used at different stages of the renovation program from modeling the effective space use and new local hot spots to operational control of construction using shots captured by urban surveillance cameras and quadcopters.

Also, the Moscow Digital Twin helps to plan multipurpose development projects, mapping all future buildings on the 3D copy at once in order to model the microdistrict development as a whole; by switching between layers, engineers can see how the area looked before and how it will change after the construction.

Data analytics tools built into the Moscow Digital Twin simulate in advance how a certain decision will affect the city, for example, in 2020, it was this function that helped to make a decision to start reconstruction of the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge without a dead-lock.

Since 2022, the Moscow Digital Twin has got dynamic layers to display more than eight thousand municipal vehicles and machines directly on the 3D copy, based on data received from moving devices. Currently, the platform is widely used to supervise the removal of construction and demolition debris, movements of public transport or utility services.

How AI boosts Moscow Digital Twin

The Moscow Digital Twin is evolving with the help of AI technology, for example, a 3D model of the city is created with three algorithms at once, which are responsible for better details, color correction of source photographs and removal of individual items that can hamper car movement, in particular.

In addition, artificial intelligence displays shots captured by video surveillance cameras on the 3D Moscow model, thus providing an accurate understanding of the surveillance coverage in order to assess how effective they are in ensuring the safety.